Migrating Data with gptransfer

Migrating Data with gptransfer

This topic describes how to use the gptransfer utility to transfer
data between databases.

Note: Greenplum Database provides two utilities for migrating
data between Greenplum Database installations, gpcopy and
gptransfer. Use gpcopy to migrate data to a Greenplum
Database cluster version 5.9.0 and later. Use the gptransfer utility to
migrate data between Greenplum Database installations running software version 5.8.0 or
earlier.

The gptransfer utiltiy is deprecated and will be removed in the
next major release of Greenplum Database. For information about migrating data with
gpcopy, see Migrating Data with gpcopy.

The gptransfer migration utility transfers Greenplum Database
metadata and data from one Greenplum database to another Greenplum database, allowing you to
migrate the entire contents of a database, or just selected tables, to another database. The
source and destination databases may be in the same or a different cluster. Data is
transferred in parallel across all the segments, using the gpfdist data
loading utility to attain the highest transfer rates.

gptransfer handles the setup and execution of the data transfer.
Participating clusters must already exist, have network access between all hosts in both
clusters, and have certificate-authenticated ssh access between all hosts in both clusters.

The interface includes options to transfer one or more full databases, or one or
more database tables. A full database transfer includes the database schema, table data,
indexes, views, roles, user-defined functions, and resource queues. Configuration files,
including postgresql.conf and pg_hba.conf, must be
transferred manually by an administrator. Extensions installed in the database with
gppkg, such as MADlib, must be installed in the destination database by an
administrator.

See the Greenplum Database Utility Guide for complete syntax and
usage information for the gptransfer utility.

Prerequisites

The gptransfer utility can only be used with Greenplum Database. Apache
HAWQ is not supported as a source or destination.

The source and destination Greenplum clusters must both be version 4.2 or higher.

At least one Greenplum instance must include the gptransfer utility in
its distribution. If neither the source or destination includes
gptransfer, you must upgrade one of the clusters to use
gptransfer.

The gptransfer utility can be run from the cluster with the source or
destination database.

The number of segments in the destination cluster must be greater than or equal
to the number of hosts in the source cluster. The number of segments in the
destination may be smaller than the number of segments in the source, but the data will
transfer at a slower rate.

The segment hosts in both clusters must have network connectivity with each other.

Every host in both clusters must be able to connect to every other host with
certificate-authenticated SSH. You can use the gpssh_exkeys utility to
exchange public keys between the hosts of both clusters.

What gptransfer Does

gptransfer uses writable and readable external tables, the Greenplum
gpfdist parallel data-loading utility, and named pipes to transfer data
from the source database to the destination database. Segments on the source cluster select
from the source database table and insert into a writable external table. Segments in the
destination cluster select from a readable external table and insert into the destination
database table. The writable and readable external tables are backed by named pipes on the
source cluster's segment hosts, and each named pipe has a gpfdist process
serving the pipe's output to the readable external table on the destination segments.

gptransfer orchestrates the process by processing the database objects to
be transferred in batches. For each table to be transferred, it performs the following
tasks:

creates a writable external table in the source database

creates a readable external table in the destination database

creates named pipes and gpfdist processes on segment hosts in the
source cluster

executes a SELECT INTO statement in the source database to insert the
source data into the writable external table

executes a SELECT INTO statement in the destination database to
insert the data from the readable external table into the destination table

optionally validates the data by comparing row counts or MD5 hashes of the rows in the
source and destination

cleans up the external tables, named pipes, and gpfdist
processes

Fast Mode and Slow Mode

gptransfer sets up data transfer using the gpfdist
parallel file serving utility, which serves the data evenly to the destination segments.
Running more gpfdist processes increases the parallelism and the data
transfer rate. When the destination cluster has the same or a greater number of segments
than the source cluster, gptransfer sets up one named pipe and one
gpfdist process for each source segment. This is the configuration for
optimal data transfer rates and is called fast mode. The following figure illustrates
a setup on a segment host when the destination cluster has at least as many segments as the
source cluster.

The configuration of the input end of the named pipes differs when there are fewer segments
in the destination cluster than in the source cluster. gptransfer handles
this alternative setup automatically. The difference in configuration means that
transferring data into a destination cluster with fewer segments than the source cluster is
not as fast as transferring into a destination cluster of the same or greater size. It is
called slow mode because there are fewer gpfdist processes serving
the data to the destination cluster, although the transfer is still quite fast with one
gpfdist per segment host.

When the destination cluster is smaller than the source cluster, there is one named pipe
per segment host and all segments on the host send their data through it. The segments on
the source host write their data to a writable external web table connected to a
gpfdist process on the input end of the named pipe. This consolidates the
table data into a single named pipe. A gpfdist process on the output of the
named pipe serves the consolidated data to the destination cluster. The following figure
illustrates this configuration.

On the destination side, gptransfer defines a readable external table with
the gpfdist server on the source host as input and selects from the
readable external table into the destination table. The data is distributed evenly to all
the segments in the destination cluster.

Batch Size and Sub-batch Size

The degree of parallelism of a gptransfer execution is determined by two
command-line options: --batch-size and --sub-batch-size.
The --batch-size option specifies the number of tables to transfer in a
batch. The default batch size is 2, which means that two table transfers are in process at
any time. The minimum batch size is 1 and the maximum is 10. The
--sub-batch-size parameter specifies the maximum number of parallel
sub-processes to start to do the work of transferring a table. The default is 25 and the
maximum is 50. The product of the batch size and sub-batch size is the amount of
parallelism. If set to the defaults, for example, gptransfer can perform 50
concurrent tasks. Each thread is a Python process and consumes memory, so setting these
values too high can cause a Python Out of Memory error. For this reason, the batch sizes
should be tuned for your environment.

Preparing Hosts for gptransfer

When you install a Greenplum Database cluster, you set up all the master and segment hosts
so that the Greenplum Database administrative user (gpadmin) can connect
with SSH from every host in the cluster to any other host in the cluster without providing a
password. The gptransfer utility requires this capability between every
host in the source and destination clusters. First, ensure that the clusters have network
connectivity with each other. Then, prepare a hosts file containing a list of all the hosts
in both clusters, and use the gpssh-exkeys utility to exchange keys. See
the reference for gpssh-exkeys in the Greenplum Database Utility
Guide.

The host map file is a text file that lists the segment hosts in the source cluster. It is
used to enable communication between the hosts in Greenplum clusters. The file is specified
on the gptransfer command line with the
--source-map-file=host_map_file command option. It is a required
option when using gptransfer to copy data between two separate Greenplum
clusters.

The file contains a list in the following
format:

host1_name,host1_ip_addr
host2_name,host2_ipaddr
...

The file
uses IP addresses instead of host names to avoid any problems with name resolution between
the clusters.

The destination cluster must have at least as many segments as the source cluster has
segment hosts. Transferring data to a smaller cluster is not as fast as transferring data to
a larger cluster.

Transferring small or empty tables can be unexpectedly slow. There is significant fixed
overhead in setting up external tables and communications processes for parallel data
loading between segments that occurs whether or not there is actual data to transfer. It can
be more efficient to transfer the schema and smaller tables to the destination database
using other methods, then use gptransfer with the -t
option to transfer large tables.

When transferring data between databases, you can run only one instance of
gptransfer at a time. Running multiple,
concurrent instances of gptransfer is not supported.

Full Mode and Table Mode

When run with the --full option, gptransfer copies all
user-created databases, tables, views, indexes, roles, user-defined functions, and resource
queues in the source cluster to the destination cluster. The destination system cannot
contain any user-defined databases, only the default databases postgres, template0, and
template1. If gptransfer finds a database on the destination it fails with
a message like the
following:

Note: The --full option cannot be specified with the -t,
-d, -f, or --partition-transfer
options.

To copy tables individually, specify the tables using either the
-t command-line option (one option per table) or by using the
-f command-line option to specify a file containing a list of tables to
transfer. Tables are specified in the fully-qualified format
database.schema.table. The table definition,
indexes, and table data are copied. The database must already exist on the destination
cluster.

By default, gptransfer fails if you attempt to transfer a table that
already exists in the destination database:

Override this behavior with the --skip-existing,
--truncate, or --drop options.

The following table shows the objects that are copied in full mode and table mode.

Object

Full Mode

Table Mode

Data

Yes

Yes

Indexes

Yes

Yes

Roles

Yes

No

Functions

Yes

No

Resource Queues

Yes

No

postgresql.conf

No

No

pg_hba.conf

No

No

gppkg

No

No

The --full option and the --schema-only option can be
used together if you want to copy databases in phases, for example, during scheduled periods
of downtime or low activity. Run gptransfer --full --schema-only ... to
create the databases on the destination cluster, but with no data. Then you can transfer the
tables in stages during scheduled down times or periods of low activity. Be sure to include
the --truncate or --drop option when you later transfer
tables to prevent the transfer from failing because the table already exists at the
destination.

Locking

The -x option enables table locking. An exclusive lock is placed on the
source table until the copy and validation, if requested, are complete.

Validation

By default, gptransfer does not validate the data transferred. You can
request validation using the --validate=type option. The validation
type can be one of the following:

count – Compares the row counts for the tables in the source
and destination databases.

md5 – Sorts tables on both source and destination, and then
performs a row-by-row comparison of the MD5 hashes of the sorted rows.

If the database is accessible during the transfer, be sure to add the -x
option to lock the table. Otherwise, the table could be modified during the transfer,
causing validation to fail.

Failed Transfers

A failure on a table does not end the gptransfer job. When a transfer
fails, gptransfer displays an error message and adds the table name to a
failed transfers file. At the end of the gptransfer session,
gptransfer writes a message telling you there were failures, and
providing the name of the failed transfer file. For
example:

[WARNING]:-Some tables failed to transfer. A list of these tables
[WARNING]:-has been written to the file failed_transfer_tables_20140808_101813.txt
[WARNING]:-This file can be used with the -f option to continue

The failed transfers file is in the format required by the -f option, so
you can use it to start a new gptransfer session to retry the failed
transfers.

Best Practices

Be careful not to exceed host memory by specifying too much parallelism with the
--batch-size and --sub-batch-size command line options.
Too many sub-processes can exhaust memory, causing a Python Out of Memory error. Start with
a smaller batch size and sub-batch size, and increase based on your experiences.

Transfer a database in stages. First, run gptransfer with the
--schema-only and -d database
options, then transfer the tables in phases. After running gptransfer with
the --schema-only option, be sure to add the --truncate or
--drop option to prevent a failure because a table already exists.

Be careful choosing gpfdist and external table parameters such as the
delimiter for external table data and the maximum line length. For example, don't choose a
delimiter that can appear within table data.

If you have many empty tables to transfer, consider a DDL script instead of
gptransfer. The gptransfer overhead to set up each table
for transfer is significant and not an efficient way to transfer empty tables.

gptransfer creates table indexes before transferring the data. This slows
the data transfer since indexes are updated at the same time the data is inserted in the
table. For large tables especially, consider dropping indexes before running
gptransfer and recreating the indexes when the transfer is complete.